What Without a Dance
by Wolf-of-Words
Summary: [Oneshot][AnemonexDominic] The evolution of her dance, and her eventual realization.


-->**Author's Note:** Geez...believe me, I know how much the Anemone x Dominic-dance/waltz story/plot device has been done to hell and back, but I thought I'd add another one to the massive mushy pile that is Anemone x Dominic. This ficcy started out in another direction, I swear, but...it swerved. And I got majorly side-tracked. Still, gotta love Team Gulliver. And Anemone x Dominic is just too cute to pass up. Enjoy.

>Slight spoilers up to and including episode 45...I think. Some parts taken from episode 43 (Or...around there. xD) Nothing major, but if you don't want to be spoiled...

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What Without a Dance

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Anemone would practice her dance, sometimes, when she found time between the politics and the raging wars.

At first she would take it one step at a time, perfecting _onestepforward_ and then _rockheelbackward _and finally _spintwirlturn._ She was, for the most part, alone in her awkward almost-elegant dance, though sometimes (in the moments she was most lucid) Dominic would join her in her non-descript room and contribute his own equally awkward steps and shuffling feet to the waltz. (This either earned a slightly-mad chuckle from Anemone or a kick planted in the poor boy's shin, depending on her mood-- the former to which Dominic would blush and watch his feet most carefully.)

Occasionally, when she felt good and the day had been going well, Anemone would drag Gulliver into the brawl, and, under Dominic's protests, the animal would practice with her, draped over the boy's shoulder.

In almost no time at all, Anemone had mastered her waltz, and no longer did she stumble or pause or break. She moved with deliberate fluidness that came with a practiced ease as she twirled once, twice, three times around with her imaginary partner to the imaginary music.

Anemone soon grew frustrated with Dominic's somewhat lacking performance as a dance partner and promptly banished him from her room. She recognized-- somewhere deep within her mind where the drugs had not touched-- that the look that Dominic gave her as she pushed and shoved and half-dragged him out the door was not that of regret, but of hurt, and she pushed him harder out the door, her face flushed.

For the next hour, she sat on the bed (never _her_ bed) sitting in the middle of the room and stared at the metal ceiling, until she eventually resumed her practiced dance and hummed a melody that echoed eerily in the empty metal room.

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The anemone flower, a dark red against the cold metal table, sat lamenting upon the words said and unsaid alike as Anemone prepared for the party. Dominic was waiting outside her room for her and she emerged from the sliding doors in time to catch him tracing his sore lip with his finger, but immediately he halted and looked at her.

"You look--"

"Save it," she spat, and although it tore at her heart to do so, she walked down the hall in her flowing dress to the docks.

"...beautiful." The boy mumbled under his breath and jogged to catch up.

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Dewey's arms were not warm, but they weren't cold either. It was a strange purgatory of temperatures as she put her hand into his glove-clad one and the music started for their dance.

He, too, had a practiced ease of elegance to his meandering footsteps, and Anemone was inclined to follow where they led her. She looked into Dewey's eyes as he spoke (though Anemone didn't always comprehend all of what he said) and a felt a cold detachment from them.

She soon found that she missed the warm embarrassed glow of a certain Lieutenant's silvery eyes, and the awkward path of his feet leading her somewhere even _he _didn't know, and she found her heart ached more and more with each deliberate, detached step.

She had to stop.

"Something wrong?" Dewey's voice came, as cold and detached as his eyes, almost as if he were bored.

Anemone shook her head, and Dewey continued to speak.

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When the music stopped and the crowd thinned a bit, she retreated back into the mansion, far away from the sounds of oblivious nobles. The girl peered out of the ceiling-to-floor windows in a room she had slipped into, the sky dark and without a hint of light outside.

She slid to the floor. "Oh...Dominic. Where are you?"

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"...gone."

Dominic was gone, the young members of the Ageha Squad informed her. He had betrayed the military in which he toiled in for so many years and formed an alliance with the Gekko State, the military's enemy number one.

She began to laugh in the suddenly lifeless room, with the two Ageha Squad members exchanging looks and shaking their heads in the doorway.

Dominic was gone, and she laughed harder, until tears came pouring down her cheeks, unchecked, and she did not even know why.

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End file.
